Mega kudos and muchas garcias to SIRMick & Julian Fowler for this recording recovered from the murk. The circulating cassette (represented on the other two archive.org copies) is degraded horridly. This is a huge improvement. This Thursday night show during the distracted run-up to Altamont is short and raggedy to start, but the last 80 minutes, from Dark Star through the end, are primal Dead -- the Dark Star especially -- with T.C. to the fore -- but equally the power pair Schoolgirl - Good Lovin and the triad build to the Uncle John break out.

The first show of a popular month in Grateful Dead lore, December 1969.

At this unique stage of the game, you can hear them starting to flip the page into their January 1970 sound. Jerry had already switched to the Fender Stratocaster. Songs like New Potato Caboose and Doin' That Rag were out of the live repertoire, and the new Workingman's Dead material was in.

At the same time, this is still very much a '60s show. The seesaw-style drumming, mysterious tape hiss, rosy fills from Tom Constanten, and slugging Jack Casady-like basslines from Phil give all the indication you need that this one is straight from the trippy sonic caverns of the Dead's Fillmore West heyday. The mammoth Dark Star > High Time says it all.

This delightful show is a perfect hybrid of Primal Dead and Bakersfield Dead. Classic psychedelic cowboy music.

Okay so this show is not going to win any accolades for greatest performances or anything else, buy it still is notable for the first live versions we know of Black Peter and Uncle John's Band with full with vocals. Black Peter is very long at almost 13 minutes... The Grateful Dead taping compendium review of this concert calls in a dismal show with not one note under highlights. It's definitely not that horrible to my ears. I did find it interesting to listen to the first live version of Black Peter. It's very long and somewhat laborious definitely not very good for exercising to it. Garcia's introduction to Uncle John's band is quite humorous referring to a lot of botched moments earlier in the show. They definitely mentioned having sound technical problems.

Just a quick shout out to the archive I remain very grateful to the archive for sustaining all this great music to be able to stream it for free. Despite the difficult years when they stopped allowing for downloads of soundboards...Please make a donation if you can as I did, no matter how small it matters.

... I can imagine them as the live orchestra
backing a B-grade sci-fi movie at times. I mean that in
the best possible way. Much of the rest (haven't listened
to it all) has defects in tape, & sound quality, & whatnot.
I did really dig DS though!!! Thx